A Girl Worth Studying For
by Praeludium
Summary: Hiccup is the local, slightly awkward, nerd who loves messing with machines. For reasons unknown to even his best friend, Hiccup suddenly falls for Astrid, the transfer student who apparently transferred from France. Hiccup begins his quest to relative French fluency in hopes to get closer to her; but not without a little help. AU
**Disclaimer: I do not own HTTYD in any way. This fic is only for my own entertainment and literary practice.**

 **AN: A few weeks ago, I've decided to start learning French. Then, I had this crazy idea: "Why not make Hiccup learn French at the same time?" I realized that maybe this was the missing piece to "The Autoshop" HTTYD fic I was writing. It now became totally different than what I had originally planned. Well, this happened. Enjoy.**

* * *

Prologue: "Je voudrais apprendre le français!"

"She's the new transfer student," said Fishlegs, "I've heard she transferred from France."

"W-what?" Hiccup muttered nervously.

"Astrid." Fishlegs replied. "You were staring."

"Staring!" Hiccup firmly denied. "I wasn't doing that! S-she was just in the general direction of my eyes."

"Uh-huh." Fishlegs took a bite out of his sandwich. They were eating lunch at the cafeteria.

Hiccup glanced at Fishlegs for a moment then returned gazing blankly at the blonde a across the cafeteria. "Okay. I was."

"And," Fishlegs looked expectantly at Hiccup, "there's got to be a story behind this."

"And why do you say that?" Hiccup pointed his spork at Fishlegs.

"You're Hiccup—you're never interested in anything else. For as long as I could remember, all you've did was tinker around with machines and whatnot. You've been called 'Screwdriver,' 'Junkman,' 'Greasy'—"

Hiccup shivered at the memories that Fishlegs had managed to resurface. "That's enough, please."

"Oh, four years ago you were called "The Engineer"—I liked that one." Fishlegs chuckled. " Your first crush was a V8 engine—not that that's bad or anything. Hey, that's why we're best friends right? Point is, what about her made _the_ _Engineer_ like this?"

The bell rung. Hiccup was "saved by the bell," so to speak. Hiccup didn't feel like telling Fishlegs. Rather, Hiccup didn't know what to answer. The reason was stupid, and Hiccup, as bright as he is, knew it was all too well.

Hiccup stood up, "There you have it. To be continued."—"hopefully, never again." Hiccup added in his thoughts.

Fishlegs shrugged as he finished his sandwich. "See you after school."

"Oh, I can't," Hiccup said as he walked away. "I, uh, have something I needed to do."

* * *

Hiccup knew he was being irrational.

"What am I even doing here?" Hiccup thought to himself. Hiccup neared his fist, with his thumb facing front, to the door.

Hiccup was standing in front of room B317. It was on the annex building of the school, hence the "B." It was an isolated spot—rarely was anyone seen at that part of the school.

"Why did they think of labelling the rooms here with a "B" when the main building rooms don't even have an "A," Hiccup thought.

Hiccup knew that random thought was a sad, futile attempt at distracting himself. He wanted to stall. He wanted to decide against what he was about to do.

Room B317, unbeknownst to most students, is where the French club meet. Yes, Berk's Hulligan High has a French club. Even Hiccup didn't know about it until earlier that day—or more precisely, after lunch. As confirmation, taped from the inside, on the glass window on the door of B317, was a paper that said: FRENCH CLUB.

"She transferred from France." Fishlegs words echoed inside Hiccup's head. The root of this seeming random move Hiccup had made was this. With some fallacious and impulsive concluding, Hiccup had thought that if he learned French, it would be much easier to get close to someone who supposedly came from France. And now, Hiccup was at B317, hoping to learn French at a club dedicated to things French.

What is he doing with his life. There wasn't even a guarantee that he would learn French at that club. Even if he did manage to learn, how long would it take him to reach the level of being capable of smalltalk. Hiccup and Astrid were on their senior year of high school. There's around 9-10 months in a school-year. Some people, learn a language for years and end up nowhere—what were the chances of Hiccup achieving a smalltalk-level of conversational fluency in 10 months? Nope, not likely.

"This was a crazy and impulsive decision." thought Hiccup. He sighed and did not continue his knock on the door.

The door swung open. The door made impact hard enough for the sound to fill the silent, empty space in the hallway.

"Oh, sorry! I didn't think anyone was there. No one ever comes here."

A girl stepped out the room. She had black hair in a braid that flowed over her left shoulder. She wore a woven, grey cardigan over a black top; plus jeans and sneakers. With concern, her eyes, as green as Hiccup's, looked at the boy its owner accidentally hit a few moments ago.

Hiccup felt his nose with his hand and rubbed it.

"You okay?" The girl assumed a "looking-up-semi-crouching position" to get a better view of the taller guy's face. "Wow, you're bleeding. Come inside, I have a first-aid kit."

She led Hiccup into 317B and closed the door.

It was a neat room. There was a bookshelf filled with books against the wall opposite the windows. There was a chalkboard, where it would be in a classroom. A table with two chairs was the centerpiece of the room. There was another chair in the corner, but it clearly wasn't for sitting on, since on top of it was a pot with flowers.

She sat Hiccup down on a chair. "Keep the bridge of your nose pinched and don't look up or down." She started to open the few cupboards and drawers adjacent to the bookshelf. "Found it!"

It all happened too fast for Hiccup to react. He sobered up after a piece of cotton was lodged up his nostril. At that point, Hiccup couldn't think of anything else to say except, "Thanks."

"No problem," she snickered, "It was _partly_ my fault."

"Excuse me, partly. What part of that was _my_ fault?"

"What were you doing standing in front of the door?" She sat down the chair opposite Hiccup.

Hiccup remembered what he was doing there. Too bad for him, he really didn't want to think about it. But, seeing as how he's already inside; Hiccup thought it might have been some sort of twisted fate that a set of coincidences lead him inside the room even after he had decided not to go through with joining the club.

"Ugh," Hiccup groaned, "Long story."

"I have time." She leaned back on her chair. As the popular saying goes, _sit back and relax._

"Due to some circumstances, I fell for this girl who was apparently a transferee from France; and, as an attempt to get closer to her, I wanted to learn French"—there was no way Hiccup was going to say this.

"I," Hiccup tried to think of a less embarrassing backstory, "I wanted to join the club." He gave up composing a grand backstory midway. He decided to just tell the truth—part of it, anyways.

"You and I have very different notions of 'long.'" She raised her eyebrow.

"Where's the adviser? Aren't student clubs supposed to come with a teacher as a supervising authority."

"He never comes. He must've figured that nothing ever happens in this club. So..." She pointed to the chair in the corner with a plant on top.

"My turn, why did you want to join this club?" She asked with genuine curiosity.

"Oh, we're taking turns now, great," Hiccup thought. Hiccup was having doubts at this poor excuse for a club.

"I was thinking of learning French," he said. "Does this club _do_ French?"

She studied his expression for a moment. He was serious. She opened the folder on the table and took one of the papers inside.

"Name?"

"I thought we were taking turns?"

"Name?"

"Hiccup."

"Seriously?" She looked at Hiccup. "Is that a nickname?"

"No, it's my birth name. Hiccup Haddock the third." He said sternly.

"The person who named you must've been a very interesting person," said she as she scribbled on the paper.

"I take it you're 17?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Congratulations, you're now an honorary member of the club; at least, you're as good as one, all that's left to do is pass this paper." She waved the paper in the air.

"What? Just like that?"

"I'm currently the only member, so any addition would be gladly welcomed." She smiled.

"You're the only member?" He asked.

It was clearly time to escape.

"Don't think about running away. This backwards school penalizes students who don't attend the clubs they joined; and, once I pass this paper, you are officially in this club."

"That isn't even fully filled up!"

"A student's personal info is easy to dig up."

"My signature?"

"I got an A+ in calligraphy. I only need to see it once to make a reasonably good replica." She eyed the back of Hiccup's ID which was showing the entire time.

Hiccup hastily flipped his ID. All the more reason to escape, this girl was dangerous.

She sighed. She saw a bit of apprehension in Hiccup's eyes. While she did want new members, she realized she didn't want to get one like this. "Je m'appelle Heather. Je ne parle pas bien le français, but, if it's okay with you, we could learn together."

Hiccup thought about it for a moment. He thought of a few points: one, there was nowhere in the city of Berk where he could study French; two, it was proven that it's better to learn a language with a partner; three, this girl—Heather—seemed like she genuinely wanted to learn French.

"When did you join this club?"

"I found out about this club at the end of last year, when I joined," she said solemnly. "Actually, I was as surprised as you were when I found out this first two weeks of class that all the members before had already graduated. The school wouldn't allow me to post posters to advertise the club for new members. I thought that maybe the adviser could help, but he never came and I couldn't contact him. Word of mouth didn't work either. Well, you know, _C'est la vie._ "

"Word of mouth kinda did it. I'm here."

"It doesn't count as a success if you won't join."

Hiccup didn't know know for sure if this girl is for real or he's just being ingeniously conned into joining; but she seemed sincere enough and she spoke authentic sounding French—that was enough for Hiccup.

No, he wasn't desperate—or at least, that's what Hiccup wanted to believe.

Hiccup took the paper and pen from Heather's hands and scribbled on the bottom right of the page.

"I'll look forward to working with you." He extended his hand for a shake.

Heather giggled and took his hand, "Moi aussi, j'ai hâte de travailler avec vous."

"Yes, I totally understand what you've just said."

"I think we'll get along just fine." Heather laughed at his sarcasm. "Don't worry, I don't think it was entirely correct anyways."


End file.
